After the brief “correction” in October, the market basically pulled a Men In Black where it essentially looked at the pen and proceeded to forget the past and resumed its ascendency to record highs. I made a couple of moves on my portfolios to bank some profits and to open some new positions. This is despite my feelings that the stock market is still overpriced.

As we begin a new year, we get blitzed by Wall Street and Bay Street money "experts" and soothsayers with variety of predictions and forecasts of where stock markets, economies, and interest rates will be heading. Then...nothing. No follow-up to see if these people actually have the chops to predict the future. I always like to roll back the tape to see how those predictions panned out.

Canaccord S&P500 Forecasts

“Canaccord Genuity's Tony Dwyer estimates the equity benchmark will end 2017 at 2,340, an increase of 15 per cent from Wednesday's closing level of 2,047.63, with half of the gains coming this year. The strategist expects that an improvement in the global economy and higher commodity prices will boost corporate earnings that have fallen for four straight quarters. The S&P 500 has lost 1.1 per cent since the start of 2015.

"The combination of historic monetary accommodation, better economic readings, a positive inflection in EPS beginning 2Q16, and the historic turn in market breadth and credit warrant a more aggressive position," Dwyer, an equity strategist and managing director at Canaccord Genuity, wrote in a client note Thursday. "We believe a more stable global economy, emerging currency and commodity price backdrop should allow for better EPS growth despite the macro headwinds."

Result: Closest and therefore the most optimistic was John Praveen of Prudential at 2575. Everyone else about couple of hundred points short. I’m sure last year I thought this was even ludicrously optimistic.

I have been writing these type of review posts for quite a few years now and I can't remember a year like this past year where the predictions of the analysts were pretty good. It's usually quite comedic how way off their predictions are. That being said, credit is due where it is due and so I tip my hat off to them. Well done. They are smart people, no doubt about it, unfortunately, it is just impossible with any level of consistent accuracy to predict the future. I've already been logging the 2018 forecasts so let's see if they can keep the streak up.